Heart Change

        My "it will hurt" post received a lot of hits and feed back, so today I thought I would expand on that.  You see I have to tell you where our hearts began when we started this process.  
         So in the beginning we said we would love to give a home to a child that lives in our city/state.  We felt called to love a child from the US that needed a home.  We thought we will take a "safe" child.  So we searched out options with the county and with Hand in Hand, a local foundation.  We met with Hand in Hand and then we went to the county orientation night.  We went back and forth for awhile and decided to start the classes with the county even though we still felt a bit undecided.  As classes began, the LORD began to move on our hearts.  What surprised us was how much our hearts broke for the parents of these children in the system.  The parents were in dire need of help and love too.  We also started to come to the place of realizing that the children that had grown inside of me did not belong to us.  
         We experienced a few things that showed us in a real way that we were not in control of how long our children would be with us.  One was what happen to Dustin's college pastor.   The pastor's daughter was diagnosed twice with a rare form of cancer.  This is when we made the big change.  We decided to tell the county we would take any child whether they would stay for a week, a month, or forever.  This was a big deal for us and lots of people looked at us like we were crazy.  I mean it wasn't just our hearts but the girls as well.  We knew that the LORD was the one who led us here with words of truth, so we pushed forward. Just before we finished paperwork and said we were ready to take placement I attended a friends birth.  Her little girl was born into the LORDs arms and I learned once again that this would not be done by my strength but by the LORDS.  I realized that not one of my child's days was promised to me.  What was promised was the strength to love them and the blessing that loving them would bring.  Three months later we got our first call and this crazy journey began.  We learned that we would love children before we even met them.  We learned that we would love them more than we ever thought possible.  And we learned that our children's love for them would not change when they were told these kids could go back to their parents and have to leave our family.

You can do this, but not because you have the strength to do it but because the LORD will be your strength.

Music is often a way the LORD speaks to me and I think this song speaks volumes about life, but also specifically the bumpy road of foster care and adoption.  

"one day you will set all things right. When my world is shaking, heaven stands.  When my heart is breaking, I never leave your hands."